Blue Bell announced Wednesday it was recalling select flavors of ice cream distributed across the South and made at its Sylacauga, Alabama, plant after finding chocolate chip cookie dough from a third-party supplier — Iowa-based Aspen Hills Inc. — that was potentially contaminated with listeria.

Blue Bell halted sales, issued a voluntarily recall of all its products in April 2015 and shut down its three plants due to bacteria contamination that was linked to 10 listeria cases in four states, including three deaths in Kansas. The company, headquartered in Brenham, about 70 miles outside Houston, resumed selling its products about four months later. Before resuming production, the company said it had implemented new cleaning and sanitizing procedures at its facilities, as well as new testing programs and new employee training.

The iconic ice cream brand is beloved in Texas, where people impatiently awaited its return to store shelves after the recall.

No illnesses have been reported from the latest recall of ice cream distributed in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, Blue Bell said.

Blue Bell said on Thursday in an email to The Associated Press that it found listeria contamination in packages of cookie dough ingredient received from Aspen Hills.

But a statement from Aspen Hills said its cookie dough product tested negative for listeria before it was shipped to Blue Bell and that the “positive listeria results were obtained by Blue Bell only after our product had been in their control for almost two months.”

Aspen Hills said that Blue Bell is the only customer who received the cookie dough product “included in our voluntary recall.” Blue Bell has been a customer of Aspen Hills since January.

Last Thursday I spent my morning with some really passionate folks who run emergency food agencies like church food pantries, soup kitchens and transitional homes. These agencies do really important work to help folks in need – especially those who can’t access food.

During the workshop we talked about the risks of receiving food donations from people who want to help but may not be great at food safety. Knowing your suppliers and what they do to address hazards (whether they are commercial producers, well-meaning amateurs, or poachers) is good food safety management.

According to the Western Gazette, meat from poachers in the UK is making it’s way to dinner tables.

Police have asked residents to be on the lookout for meat acquired through illegal poaching and have warned that eating such meat can result in diseases such as Tuberculosis and E.coli.

In an effort to curb illegal poaching, police have joined forces with a number of agencies including South Somerset District Council to combat poaching in the region head on.

The South West Anti-Poaching Group now has agencies working hard together to share information and identify those catch poaching.

The group’s Stop Poaching campaign encourages the public to report poaching and report where the meat is going, where it is being butchered and where it is being sold.

Portfolio holder for environmental health at the district council Carol Goodall said: “The last few years have shown that poaching is not about the lone rural rouge taking one for his larder, there are those who are taking deer, fish and livestock which inevitably end up in the food chain be it via restaurants, hotels or via a meat supplier.

The lawsuits were filed last fall and early this year following a Sept. 14, 2014, 90th birthday party for a member of Crossover Church of Rosedale, where the party took place. The hosts served mesquite grilled chicken from Coconut Joe’s, whose restaurant is at 4158 California Ave.

All of the civil cases are pending in Kern County Superior Court. A case management conference is scheduled for May 5. No trial date has been set.

Owner Joe Coughlin blamed the illness on Jordano’s, a wholesale food and beverage supplier based in Santa Barbara County that the restaurant was trying out for the first time the weekend of the party.

That was a “test run” of Jordano’s, which was trying to woo the restaurant’s business from a competitor, Coughlin said. He had not purchased chicken from Jordano’s previously and had already decided not to use the company again when word reached the restaurant that some party guests were getting sick, he said.

“In 28 years, we hadn’t had any problems … and we haven’t had any problems since,” Coughlin said, adding that he felt “caught in the middle” by a food safety gap that was beyond his control.

“That industry is heavily regulated,” he said. “We trusted them.”

Jordano’s, which Coconut Joe’s named in cross complaints dated April 17, did not return several telephone calls requesting an interview. In the court filing, Coconut Joe’s asked the court to make Jordano’s pay for any sum awarded to plaintiffs.

Jordano’s does not raise chickens. The company sells chicken raised elsewhere.

The California Department of Public Health tried to trace the chicken to its source and said based on records and coded packaging, it “most likely” came from Holmes Foods Inc.

Donna Fenton, director of Kern County Public Health Services’ Environmental Health Division, said “It was a little complicated because there was food brought in, too, like a pot luck, but there were people who had consumed food at Coconut Joe’s who had not been at the party, so while we can’t say with 100 percent certainty it was Coconut Joe’s chicken, because of the number of cases we can presume that that was the source of contamination.”

Ten restaurant inspections were conducted between Sept. 22, 2014, and Oct. 27, 2014. The county also questioned 36 customers who reported illness and tested stool samples from six of them.

Five samples came back positive for two different strains of the disease: four for salmonella serogroup B and one for salmonella serogroup A-1, according to the health department.

Manningham Council demanded an immediate shutdown of the rustic Yarra Organics cafe, run by John and Nancy Mustafa, in response to a complaint about insect contamination in food.

Council officers visited the heritage cafe, which sold organic pies, pasties, cakes, biscuits and coffees, and found that food sold there had been bought from unregistered businesses and was in breach of food safety standards.

Council chief executive Joe Carbone said officers were only recently made aware of the cafe, which according to reviews online, has been open since at least June 2012.

The family, which has run the apple orchard for more than 15 years, said no food was prepared on site — and there wasn’t even a kitchen.

“We have been forced to close the cafe when we do not even operate an oven or stove on the premises,” Mrs Mustafa said.

“Petty’s organic apple farm has just been closed down by Manningham city council templestowe because of having a café on premises. Please help by sending a complaint to manningham.vic.gov.au/ PLEASE SHARE AND HELP THE FIGHT!!”

Petty’s is one of Melbourne’s oldest commercial orchards and is on land owned by Parks Victoria.

The sushi slime, or tuna backmeat that has now been linked to 141 confirmed Salmonella illnesses, up from 116, originated at a tuna processing facility in India.

Sushi eaters, you thought you were eating what? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has conducted a traceback of tuna from four of the outbreak clusters, in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Texas, and Wisconsin, and found that all four received the same imported frozen raw Nakaochi Scrape tuna product from a single tuna processing facility in India.

Chapman and I chatted today – with his kids, extended family, burgeoning home canning career – he had to escape the Food Safety Summit in D.C. to catch up. He told me one of the industry types said everyone uses this stuff, which has helped propel the popularity of sushi eating.

Nancy Shute of NPR describes the Jones’ Mock Salt recall as a collision of two distressing trends: contamination of herbs and spices, and safety issues with organic products.

It’s made by June Jones, a hairdresser in Tacoma, Wash., who invented the seasoning a few years ago, after one of customers complained that the salt-free seasonings in the supermarket tasted terrible. Her little start-up has been a success.

But one of the ingredients in Jones’s secret recipe is organic celery seed. And that’s the source of the trouble.

Over the past few months Safeway and other big retailers have recalled organic celery seed because a batch of the seeds positive for salmonella, which can cause fatal infections. No illnesses have been reported, but the suspect seeds were distributed from last May through December.

Recalls and outbreaks caused by contaminated herbs and spices are not uncommon. Hundreds of people in 44 states fell ill with salmonella in 2009 and 2010 after eating Italian-style sausage. The culprit was red and black pepper used to season the meat.

We called up June Jones to find out what went wrong. "My supplier actually sent to me a recall letter," she said. "I pulled everything off the shelves in December, and recalled online orders. It’s very hard."

Her business will survive, she says, but she has taken a big hit financially. And she’s worried because most of her customers use salt substitute because they have health problems.

"It was very disturbing to me. I supply to a heart transplant patient in Minnesota," Jones says. "I take every precaution myself as a manufacturer to make sure my product is totally safe, and I expect other people do to that, too."

Because spices can be contaminated with bacteria and insects, big retailers routinely irradiate spices to kill pathogens.

We asked Jones if the celery seed she bought was irradiated. "Irradiated? I didn’t ask about that. I made my product from products that are supposed to be safe."

So we called up her supplier, Starwest Botanicals of Rancho Cordova, Calif. Lisa O’Keeley, the customer service supervisor, told us that the firm had found out about the contamination after a manufacturer using their seeds tested a batch and found salmonella.

"Typically all of our products get run through a full gamut of testing by our quality assurance department," O’Keeley told The Salt. "When that product was approved, there was no evidence of salmonella at the time."

The seeds in question came from Egypt, which also happens to be the source of the tainted fenugreek sprouts that were linked to the E. coli outbreak in Germany last year.

O’Keeley says her Egyptian seeds were given an organic certification by an outside inspector. "We have very strict guidelines on what we can call certified organic. "

But organic certification doesn’t measure food safety; it’s only about how a food was grown. Recalls of organic tomatoes, lettuce, and other produce for contamination with salmonella and other deadly pathogens are, alas, common.
Organic foods have even spread botulism — like the Italian stuffed olives we covered last year.

"Consumers think organic is safer," says Doug Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University. "But it doesn’t. It’s just a word. It really doesn’t mean much aside from how it was grown."

He should know; he researches outbreaks, and covers them on barfblog, a go-to source on all things icky in food safety.

He doesn’t have much sympathy for June Jones’s situation, particularly since there’s been an explosion of small food producers like her in recent years.

"If you’re going to sell to the public, you’d better know what you’re selling. Whether she thinks she’s part of the industry or just a small little producer, it doesn’t matter. You make people barf, they’re doing to come after you."

One rainy day, we toured around and ended up at a cheese shop. They produced the cheese in the factory at the back, and had a charming market outlet that seemed to trap tourists like bees on sap.

Upon entering the store, a sign declared, “HACCP – A food safety program; Hazard Analysis Critical Control Pont.” Cool. I asked one of the staff what it meant. She said she didn’t know. ??But beside the HACCP proclamation was a sign that read, “Public bathroom is out of order; for your convenience there is a blue Johnny on the spot behind the building.”?

No handwashing facilities or sanitizer. I watched people go to the porta potty and then come into the cheese shop and do what people do at quaint cheese shops: stick their unwashed hands into shared samples of curds (that’s one of my daughters looking disgusted in the middle, right, not because of the practice, but because I have to take pictures and be a food safety geek everywhere we go). HACCP really doesn’t mean much unless there is a culture of food safety amongst the employees and everyone involved in making a product, like cheese or deli meat.??

These public sampling stations can be cross-contamination nightmares. But the best hygiene won’t prevent food safety foul-ups when the product itself is contaminated.

The outbreak appears to have been associated with cheese available for purchase at Costco "Cheese Road Shows," and Costco was working with state officials to remove the tainted product from its stores.

Early data from health officials suggests that Dutch-style Gouda cheese is the culprit. Costco is cooperating with the investigation: they have removed all suspect products from shelves and are notifying customers who purchased cheese from the road show.

• Consumers who have any of this cheese should not eat it. They should return the cheese to the place of purchase or dispose of it in a closed plastic bag and place in a sealed trash can to prevent people or animals, including wild animals, from eating it.

• Most people infected with E. coli O157:H7 develop diarrhea and abdominal cramps, but some illnesses may last longer and can be more severe. While most people recover within a week, some may develop a severe infection. Rarely, as symptoms of diarrhea improve, a type of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) can occur; this can happen at any age but is most common in children under 5 years old and in older adults. People with HUS should be hospitalized immediately, as their kidneys may stop working and they may be at risk for other serious health problems.

• As of Thursday, November 4, 2010, 25 persons infected with the outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7have been reported from five states since mid-October. The number of ill persons identified in each state with this strain is as follows: AZ (11), CA (1), CO (8), NM (3) and NV (2). There have been 9 reported hospitalizations, 1 possible case of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), and no deaths.

I was with this girl once in my younger days and we were driving north somewhere in Ontario. She had previously consumed a bunch of guacamole and a few beverages, and it wasn’t long before she was vomiting the most vile smelling guacamole barf.

I’ve never eaten the stuff again (although people in the current household like it, as seen in this nearly empty bowl of guacamole photographed in the most attractive manner I could, last night).

Sol noted yesterday the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported nearly 1 out of every 25 restaurant-associated foodborne outbreaks with identified food sources between 1998 and 2008 can be traced back to contaminated salsa or guacamole, more than double the rate during the previous decade.

Improper storage and worker contamination accounted for half the outbreaks, but, as noted by one of the researchers,

"Salsa and guacamole often contain diced raw produce including hot peppers, tomatoes and cilantro, each of which has been implicated in past outbreaks."

During a visit to a large, international city, I was hanging out with a public health type, who pointed out some row housing visible from the building we were in, and each one seemed to have a decent-sized garden. He said those gardens supply a lot of the produce to the high-end restaurants in the city. And they all use night soil.

Human poop.

I wonder what kind of controls those fancy restaurants in Los Angeles are employing as the availability of backyard entrepreneurs for meat and produce increases.

Locking up his station wagon, the one with the scratched paint and unpaid bills covering the floor mats, Cam Slocum crossed the parking lot and stepped into the kitchen of the swanky French restaurant Mélissein Santa Monica.

A cook set down his knife and walked over to greet the stranger. Slocum held out a Ziploc bag filled with lettuce.

"Hi," said Slocum, 50, his deep voice straining to be heard. "I grow Italian mache in my backyard. It’s really good, only $8 a pound. Would you like to buy some?"

A few feet away, chef de cuisine Ken Takayama glanced curiously at the lanky stranger in jeans and a worn plaid shirt. He’s heard this sort of pitch before (Takayama didn’t buy any).

Since the economy took a dive three years ago, Takayama and others say they’ve seen more and more people showing up unannounced at restaurants, local markets and small retailers, looking to sell what they’ve foraged or grown in their backyards.

No one keeps track of the number of people selling their homegrown bounty, but scores of ads have cropped up on Craigslist across the country, hawking local produce, home-filtered honey and backyard eggs.

Laura Lawson, an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says the trend harkens back to the U.S. depression of 1893, when cities encouraged owners of empty lots to let unemployed people farm them and sell the excess produce.

She said that changed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when civic leaders, reluctant to create competition for struggling farmers, advocated gardening for food — not profit.

In Los Angeles, it’s unclear whether such entrepreneurship is legal: A 1946 zoning ordinance allowed "truck gardening" but didn’t define what that meant or identify what could be grown for sale in residential areas. Because of the ambiguity, the city has shut down some backyard enterprises, but not others.

An outcry by urban farming advocates last summer prompted Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti to introduce a motion dubbed the Food and Flowers Freedom Act, which would allow people to grow "berries, flowers, fruits, greens, herbs, ornamental plants, mushrooms, nuts, seedlings or vegetables for use on-site or sale or distribution off-site."

The city’s building and safety department has stopped enforcing the old ordinance for now. The City Council is expected to vote on the proposed ordinance Friday.